It might have been hard to keep a poker face reading the news last week:

As originally reported in the American Journal, the Current’s sister publication, Maine State Police raided an illegal Texas Hold ’em tournament at the temple for the Pythian Sisters in Buxton, which is home to a local food co-op that distributes to the elderly and disabled.

For the uninitiated, the Pythian Sisters is an order for women whose ranks have been dwindling in recent years. The group is more commonly associated with grandmothers and bake sales than illegal poker tournaments.

However, in an age in which billions of dollars are spent in online poker tournaments, state lotteries and casinos, who can blame a great-grandmother for trying to get a piece of the action? And, if Joann Groder, the 72-year-old woman who founded the food co-op, is to be believed, her piece of the action was quite modest.

According to Groder, players donated money to participate in the tournament – an amount that averaged $40 to $50 a week. That money helped keep the lights and heat on in the temple building on Route 22.

Their crime, if you can call it that, was that they didn’t ante up the $200 fee for a state license to hold a tournament. Groder said she believed the organization was allowed to hold the tournaments there because it is a nonprofit – an illusion that collapsed like a house of cards when six state troopers strode into the temple.

If state police are guilty of anything, it might simply be overplaying their hand. Troopers raided the temple May 20 and seized more than $500 in cash, poker chips and cards after staking it out based on a tip from a concerned citizen. It probably would have sufficed to send in a single trooper to warn the players they needed a permit to hold the tournaments. Odds are, that’s a bluff police wouldn’t have had to call them on.

For that show of force, police are now simply enduring the slew of e-mails from the public questioning why they would come down so hard on a charitable organization. Some of those e-mails are being sent to the town of Buxton after a TV news report erroneously attributed the raid to the local police department.

Meanwhile, the food co-op is left without one of its primary sources of revenue. “Now, I don’t know what we’ll do,” Groder said.

The food co-op had been planning a pot roast supper for June 20, but with the recent raid, the money raised at the meal will be that much more vital. We would urge all to attend. Small food co-ops like this one play critical roles in communities, filling in the gaps for those who are trying to get by on fixed and low incomes.

Groder, a retired dispatcher and school bus driver, voluntarily picks up donations in her truck seven days a week. The co-op opens at 9:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and volunteers say the food is usually gone by 10.

As for the 35 poker players who were at the temple the night of the raid, none of them have been charged with any crimes yet. And, after all the publicity that has followed the raid, it’s a safe bet none of them will be.

Brendan Moran, editor